Gawker: valleywag, blowhards

Jason Calacanis Nominates Himself MySpace's Captain Obvious

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:07:06 EDT

The most amusing thing about fameballs is when they don't realize their balls have stopped rolling. Such is bulldog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis's lot, as he desperately tries to pose as MySpace's next CEO.

Can one blame Calacanis? After a blog named him as a candidate for the job, based on speculation over his friendship with new News Corp. digital executive Jon Miller, he grabbed the opportunity to treat it seriously with nonstop "no comments." Even after former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta was revealed as the real candidate News Corp. was considering to run its social network, Calacanis has maintained the serious pose. (Everyone knows his current gig is going nowhere. We'd love to read the memo on what to do with his overgrown Web directory, Mahalo.)

Now he's penned a memo on what the next CEO of MySpace should do.

His memo is a grab gag of the trendy (virtual currencies!) and the obvious (fix the website!). It's standard fare for Calacanis, a Brooklyn-raised hustler who has made an art of talking more loudly than anyone surrounding him, in the hopes that people incapable of grasping the obvious will follow him.

Wait a second: "People incapable of grasping the obvious." We take it back. He's exactly the man MySpace needs.

"Veronica Belmont is a 'Rojas-level' hire"

Owen Thomas — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:11:44 EDT

How high is Jason Calacanis on his new videoblogger? "Veronica Belmont is a Rojas-level hire," he reportedly told groupies who showed up for a dim sum dinner in New York's Chinatown yesterday. That may sound like praise for Belmont, the videoblogger he hired away from CNET. But it's really more egotism. The thing you need to know about Jason Calacanis, the boy from Brooklyn who moved to Tinseltown, is that he fancies himself a new-age Hollywood mogul for the Web. Like a studio boss of old, he hopes to manufacture stars. Take, for example, his flashy hire of Peter Rojas away from Gizmodo (like Valleywag, a site published by Gawker Media) to run Engadget. Calacanis parlayed Engadget into a blog network, Weblogs Inc., which he then sold for $25 million to AOL. As an AOL executive, when Amanda Congdon left Rocketboom, he publicly offered her a videoblogging deal — which never panned out. Now, with Belmont, Mahalo's new videoblogger, Calacanis again wants to create a new star. He's fooling himself.

Not because Belmont is untalented. Far from it. We won't weigh in on whether she's "Rojas-level." (She is dating Ryan Block, Rojas's successor as the editor of Engadget.) Let's explore the Rojas analogy for a moment. At Engadget, Rojas never needed Calacanis; he succeeded out of sheer creative energy and a fierce desire to prove himself. Judging by Calacanis's hammy performance on her trailer video, if Belmont succeeds on Mahalo, it won't be because of Calacanis. It will be in spite of him.

New York AG uses Facebook for tough-on-crime headline, accomplishes zero

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:28:44 EDT

Parents, your kids aren't safe anywhere, at any age. Toddlers put their fingers in outlets. Teens will act on their hormones. Twentysomethings will take jobs at Gawker Media. It's your responsibility to prevent such catastrophes from happening. Politicians will not help. Take New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, for example. Facebook today agreed to cooperate with Cuomo's office in an investigation targeting online sexual predators. This might make parents feel better about their children's safety. After the jump, why It shouldn't.

According to research, only 7 percent of arrests for statutory rape in 2000 were Internet-related. What's more, even most of those cases are what experts call "criminal seductions," which is what its called when teenagers are seduced by adults who did not try to conceal the fact that they were adults. For teenagers, going online is as dangerous as going to a party. A really boring party.

And here's the thing. Just as much as you should know which parties your teens are going to, you should know who they're communicating with online. Spy on them. It's cool. What are they going to do, sue you? You're their parents. As far as you're concerned, they have no constitutional rights, after all! Monitor them now, lest they grow up to be bloggers.